Through-Armor Critical
by michaelb958
Summary: Or, the most powerful holdout pistol in the universe.


It could not be said that I was a happy MechWarrior. That had been true three minutes ago when I still had a functioning JagerMech, but it certainly wasn't now. People gave Locusts flak for being lightly armed, but they were the bane of JagerMechs - they just stayed in your rear arc and chewed up your ammo bins. By the time I'd killed it (I didn't quite remember how) my engine was melting the torso structure and I'd had to eject. So here I was, wandering the foggy hills without a 'Mech to my name, looking for a fellow member of my extensively thinned-out artillery group to hitch a ride with.

It was really a nice kind of day, if one ignored the fog and the indistinct sounds of battle. It was also really a nice kind of place, also if you ignored the fog and the battle. I mean, there were always going to be better places for a holiday (Terra? Solaris VII? Somewhere warmer and sunnier?), but this one really wouldn't have been that bad had we not been fighting on it.

It turned out that between literal fog, figurative fog of war, literal enemy action, and figurative enemy action (read: Murphy), I was more than a kilometre from my nearest friendly. Explains why a single Locust had been bouncing about shredding my armor and nobody had turned up to help either of us.

I was just steeling myself for the hike ahead when a 'Mech loomed out of the fog. It was an Atlas. Had it not been painted in enemy colours, I would still have known it to be an enemy because they fielded Atlases (Atlai?) and we didn't.

In a fight between an Atlas and a dismounted MechWarrior, there was really only going to be one outcome - one outmassed the other by a factor of a **thousand**, and its smallest gun would wipe me off the map regardless of my armor. I was too exasperated to care, so I deployed both of the ranged weapons I had - I screamed an obscenity at its operator's parentage and fired my holdout pistol.

I then did a lot of good running to avoid being crushed.

* * *

Two days later I dropped in on the 'Mech bay, unofficially to check on my old ride being stripped for parts, officially to check out my new one; and by expenditure of favours and good alcohol wrangled the story of what the hell happened.

I'd fired my holdout pistol. Exactly one bullet struck the Atlas, approximately over its gyro. This had no outward effect, and only one in a trillion times would have done anything at all - but this trillionth time a shard of internal structure had spalled off from the incredibly minor shock and been ejected in the direction of the gyro.

This was the moment that the MechWarrior inside, slightly incensed by what I'd just said about her parents, decided that it would be fitting to have a hundred tons of 'Mech step on me. She'd just commanded it to lean forward to take a step when the gyro was fouled by that metal shard. The DI computer went to its first resort of troubleshooting the gyro, which was to push the gyro harder - the wrong reaction, as there was a metal shard in it, and pushing the thing harder just stripped it a bit.

At this point something went seriously haywire somewhere in the computer - nobody knows where, the coders are still trying to figure it out - and it decided to lean the 'Mech using the leg actuators instead. Not sure how that made sense to anyone. It might have worked if the 'Mech hadn't been just starting to step. It was just starting to step, though, and this computer bug didn't account for the right foot lifting. So a hundred tons of Atlas leans forward more than anybody wanted.

The DI computer, now realising what was going on, countermanded the issue, and demanded opposite action from the leg actuators and the gyro. Again, normally this would have restabilised the 'Mech, but remember that metal shard in the gyro? The gyro reversed direction, and, being fouled, just about blew itself apart. That reduced the tilt available to the DI, which is a really nice way of saying that 'Mechs have a great deal of difficulty staying upright without a gyro. This one, already leaning forwards, had no hope.

So I ran like hell out of the impact zone.

Have you ever been outside an Atlas when it faceplants?

Don't.

But apparently it's preferable to being _inside_, at least this one in particular, because I recovered first. By the time my 'opponent' woke up I had the cockpit open and my (reloaded) holdout pistol pointed at them.

* * *

So once the techs get the gyro fixed and check the structure for any more spall points, I'll be driving an Atlas. Not bad for one bullet. Not particularly impressive for a bullet and that much luck, but I'll take what I can get, especially if I can get an Atlas.

* * *

_A/N: That probably cost about fifteen EDG points._


End file.
